Ricoh 408235 SP C261SFNw Color Laser Multifunction Printer

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Update 12/31: About a month shy of the 1yr anniversary of using this machine, I just had to replace the black toner. The configuration report says I got 695 pages of B&W and 431 pages of color for a total of 1,126 pages, none of which have jammed. The starter cartridges are rated for 1,000 pages, and I would assume that most of the color pages included black - in fact most of them were probably 98% black with a blue hyperlink in them or something. The color cartridges are at about 3/4 full still, despite being a few pages away from 50% of the rated capacity - translation, the starter cartridges are as advertised or slightly better. This reminds me of another thing I like about this printer: there is no time penalty for b&w vs color, because each cartridge contains its own imaging drum (I think Im using the right terminology, if not, sue me). Ive had color lasers in the past with one imaging cartridge, so color pages took 4x longer than B&W because each color (CMYK) had to get its own turn with the page. Bonus, if you buy genuine Ricoh toner (it was only like $10 more when I bought it), you can get a return label for recycling the old one. I also came up with two negatives! 1) If youre using it wirelessly and something happens to your wireless connection, you have to restart the machine for it to reconnect to the network. This is silly and can probably be fixed in firmware if Ricoh finds out about it (maybe they already have?)...I have mine plugged in on ethernet now, which is ironic because an initial requirement of mine was that the printer must support wireless. This is an annoyance if not a problem. 2) While its printing, it doesnt appear that you can do other things ... so if you plan on printing a 50 page document and then scanning something at the same time, you might be out of luck. Let me dry my tears and move on ..... ------------ I am very particular about my printer purchases. Ive only bought laser, for my home use, for more than 10 years. This is the best one Ive owned yet. The only thing I *dont* like about it is ... I cant think of anything. Maybe its a tad slower than my outgoing unit? I mentioned home use, so Im not in a terrible hurry, and the built-in auto duplexing more than makes up for it -- and yes, the ADF can scan duplex. It scans both sides at one time, in fact. I just thought of an issue -- envelope printing is a bit weird. You have to lift a couple latches on the fuser - maybe it keeps envelopes from melting shut? I dont know, because I havent printed an envelope in the 2010s. But it seems like it would be a hassle for a regular envelope printer. Oh, despite the A4 in the description, it can perfectly well handle North American Letter-sized paper. Google Cloud Print was not supported out of the box but a firmware update solves that. Been using this unit for one month .. today, in fact .. and will update this as time progresses.

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So far it prints great color on normal paper. Double sided printing is also painless. My prior printer (for years) was a Brother that I wish I could just repair. The Ricoh is painfully slow--print 10 pages of double-sided color, go get a cup of coffee, maybe two. (Im exaggerating just a little). The Ricoh manual is huge also, so I still dont know how to scan double-sided to USB, for example, after spending 15 minutes trying to find it. Way too much deep technical information and how to do complex functions, and not enough simple information on "Heres how to do X" in that manual. The Ricoh is also very finicky on paper thickness. I used to print signs on thicker magnetic sheets on the Brother and it just did it every time. The Ricoh just wont do that no matter what I try. The Ricoh paper tray also seems finicky, because I have to open it and push all the paper back in every once in a while after it jams itself up. For the price though its good, especially for normal printing, but youll need to study for your Masters Degree in Ricoh in order to do anything other than simple prints.

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Dont waist your time unless you want no support. Ricoh wont even let you register this product unless you are a business. If you dont register it, they cant/wont help you either. Their loophole! Ive had issues with it saying it is offline. Had to reinstall it multiple times. It will scan to my computer but then when I try to print it says it is offline. Probably an easy fix but Ive googled the issue with no luck and of course RICOH cant help me because Im not registered. Also the print quality is not the greatest. I really wanted to love this printer but I just have too many issues. Im going to try and return it. Ive had it less than a month and have been trying to register for 3 weeks. Was just told tonight they would not because I am not a business.

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Love this laser printer. Quick and quality prints. It does not auto print when switching from WIFI to USB printing as I had to install driver packages for both types of connections. I am pretty tech savvy and my main complaint was the WIFI Scan to folder and email setup took me hours to complete and a phone call to customer support, which was very helpful I might add. Scanning is auto duplexing, and printing is auto duplexing.

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This is my first Ricoh product. Great quality & performance for printing text & pictures -- color & B/W. Overall, the setup is simple. However, some of the setup instructions are lean, requiring some intuition, e.g., faxing. Replacing ink will be expensive. But consider the quality & number of copies generated from this Ricoh AIO compared to other AIO printers. Its been my experience with printers (different brands) that an inexpensive extended warranty would be prudent.

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Its a little early to write a detailed review as I have only had this printer for one day. But what I can say is how incredibly easy this was to set up to my wireless router. I think I spent more time taking all of the protective tape off of this printer than it took to start printing pages from both computers via WiFi. Actually installing the drivers took the most amount of time. Very pleased with the setup. Print quality is amazing so far considering its lazer and very reasonably priced. Very happy with the color quality so far in the limited prints Ive ran off. I have yet to set up the scanning features and get that working the way I want, so I cannot speak for that yet. Also have not tried printing from phone yet. Not a huge deal to me though.

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I am a real fan of Ricoh printers. I dumper all of HP printers for Ricoh printers years ago. But this is the first Ricoh Fax machine that I have purchased. I have had 10 or so fax machines over the last 30 years of running different companies and they have all been pretty straight forward to set up as stand alone machines or as multifunction devices connected to my network. But the setup on this machine is terrible. The manual is very poorly written. I work in high tech, and pretty much expect the manuals to be poorly written, by people whos native language is not English, but this takes the cake. The number pad has numbers and standard configuration letters on the pad, but I still havent found a way to bring up the letters. There are 3 letters per each number, as is standard, but since what you punch in is entered as a hidden password (*****) you will never know if what you punched in is correct even if you do find a way to activate the letters. I have tried every combination and permutation of keystrokes with the keypad, and dont see any way to activate the letters. Which means that I cannot put in the password to our wireless network. And I cannot put in the Name of My Company in the Fax header. I connected the machine directly to my laptop and installed the software as is recommended, but the only software that is installed is the scan utility, so no help in setup there. I Do Not Recommend Buying This Multifunction Fax Machine.

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I dont print a lot and I got tired of ink cartridges drying up before they were half empty. Finally the ink gummed up my whole inkjet printer and no amount of cleaning removed the error code so I scrapped it. I saw this all in one color laser printer that uses four toner cartridges and it was about the same price as a good inkjet printer, so I decided to give it a try. I am very pleased. It can connect via Ethernet, USB, or wireless. It has the option to print front and back, it scans single or multiple sheets in color or b&w. It can function as a copy machine. It also has fax send/receive capability but I have not used that function. Print quality is excellent and if you get some glossy laser printer paper (do NOT use inkjet photographic paper!) it makes fairly decent color photographs but they are not as good as a good inkjet photographic printer. From several feet away, they look fine but on close inspection they just dont compete. Compared to a good inkjet print they look sort of flat and lack brilliant color. They look more like pictures you would see in a magazine. When turned on it warms up within a minute or two so I usually turn it off if I am not printing. If left on it has a strange habit of randomly going through its warm up cycle maybe once or twice a day ... any time during the 24 hours. My only negative comment is not really negative. If you are accustomed to compact little inkjet printers, this is a monster. It is the size of a small office copy machine and it weighs a lot, like two persons to handle lot! It is clearly built to withstand heavy use. If you want to get away from ink cartridges that dry up on you and into a powder-based (toner) color printer I think this printer is an excellent place to start.

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This being our first laser printer, my learning curve required I contact support just to find I hadn’t set my home network to allow communication with the new printer. Therefore, the printer’s setup wizard could not “see” our home network even though it found all the neighbors’! That said, Ryan was excellent at providing logical support and human compassion for my frustration. The user manual is poor, even though everything else is excellent...not far to go RICOH. Five stars due to the superb support!! You simply can’t beat the bargain this is at $180 and the bargain it continues to be for occasional demand (tax time, holidays, etc) by not experiencing dry-up of ink cartridges.

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We upgraded from the inkjet printer we had for about 10 years. Prints beautiful quality full size color prints and fast from our cell phones and Chromebook remotely. Love how it sets quiet all day and warms up by itself in a minute whenever we send something to the printer. Looks like the initial laser ink supplies will last a year or more for our family. It’s laughably bigger and heavier than we were thinking but we would buy it over and over again for the features, quality, and value. Really nice printer!

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